


objects at rest

by seimaisin



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 03:03:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3553670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seimaisin/pseuds/seimaisin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post "Fire Across the Galaxy." Hera knows what she almost lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	objects at rest

Everyone else is asleep. Kanan collapsed the moment he stopped moving, while Ezra had to be bullied into bed, even when he admitted he was hearing an entire Corellian drum corps in his head. Zeb and Sabine weren’t far behind them - it’s been nothing if not a long day. Now, with Fulcrum - Ahsoka, she reminds herself, she can use her name now, here in the safety of her own ship - minding the cockpit, the only sound Hera can hear is Chopper’s soft beeping down the hall. She should be in her own bed; honestly, her eyelids feel like dead weight. But her heartbeat won’t slow down, her brain won’t stop racing. 

She opens the door to Kanan’s room. It’s been a long time since they’ve shared a bed, at least for sleeping - they both like their own space, and besides, ship bunks aren’t really built for two. But they’ll always have the key codes to each other’s doors. It’s never been spoken, but there are a lot of things she and Kanan don’t have to say to each other. There’s a part of her that’s still a little frightened of that, a much younger girl hiding inside of her who is still terrified of putting so much of her own life in someone else’s hands. She’s loved, and lost, before. Once, she swore she wouldn’t do it again. But some vows were always meant to be broken, no matter how much you mean them at the time.

Hera sits cross-legged next to the bed. Kanan sleeps on his back, his mouth slightly open, his chest rising and falling in a gentle motion that Hera watches silently for several minutes. “Too close,” she murmurs aloud. She’d come too close to an empty bed, an empty room. 

She’d had a plan. Once she would have thrown herself into danger to save him without a second thought. Now, though, there are others to think of - Zeb, whose talents are many, but who remains one of the few of his kind in the galaxy. Sabine, wise beyond her years but still young enough to make all the difference. And now Ezra, young and powerful and maddening and terrifying, who brings Kanan closer to the person he’s always meant to be than anyone else. They’re more important than either Hera or Kanan - another thing they’ve never needed to say to each other, but that they both understand. If the Republic is to ever triumph, it will need people like their young friends to make it work. So keeping them safe is the first priority. But she’d had a plan, or at least the bones of one. She’d take the ship out past the planet’s defenses, and contact Fulcrum for a rendezvous. Then, she’d have Chopper take over piloting, and once she’d programmed the jump to hyperspace, she’d take the Phantom back to the planet before Chopper initiated the jump. What she’d do beyond that, she hadn’t known, but she figures she would have thought of something. 

But her little crew had taken the matter out of her hands. And as angry and as frightened as she was at the time, she’s never been prouder of them. 

Kanan murmurs something unintelligible in his sleep. His head moves just a bit, back and forth, as if denying whatever he sees behind his eyelids. Hera feels a pain in her chest. Of course his dreams won’t be kind. She doesn’t know exactly what he suffered during his captivity, but she’s been rescuing people from the Empire long enough to make an educated guess. And the fact that he’s a Jedi … well, it would take more than the usual torture to break someone with that much control over his own mind. She reaches over and puts her hand over the larger one laying slack at his side. “I’m here,” she whispers. “It’s okay.” It’s not okay - she isn’t naive enough to think that - but at least he’ll wake up in his own bed instead of an Imperial torture chamber. 

She thinks back to those early days, when Kanan wouldn’t stop looking at her and she tried her damnedest not to look at him, not like that. He was unproven, an unknown - a wild card with unexplained Jedi powers and a mask she couldn’t quite see beneath. But his heart has always been bigger than he realized. Big enough for her, for Sabine and Zeb, for an unexpected padawan. Big enough for the people of Lothal, and anyone else they run across who suffer under the Empire’s rule. She just wishes he’d let himself into that big, kind heart every once in a while. But when he doubts, she just has to remind him that her own heart has always had room. Even when she didn’t want to admit it. 

Hera feels herself swaying, so she rests her head on top of their entwined hands. She doesn’t feel her eyes close, but they must, because the next thing she knows, his hand is moving beneath her and she’s blinking the blur from her vision. “Hey,” Kanan says, voice raspy with sleep. “What’re you doing?”

She rights herself and rubs the pain in her neck. “I must have dozed off.”

“Why are you down there?”

“I didn’t want to wake you. Sorry.”

Kanan looks at her for a long moment. He grabs her hand and squeezes it, before scooting closer to the wall. “Come on,” he says, tugging her arm towards him. 

She climbs up onto the bunk and presses against his side. While he tucks the covers around her, she wraps her arms around him and presses her face into his neck. His arms come up to hold her tight, and she feels his cheek against the top of her head. He’s reassuringly solid. “Hera, I …”

When he trails off, she tilts her head up to look at him. “Shhh,” she says, giving him a small smile. “I know.”

He doesn’t quite smile, but his eyes look a bit less haunted. That’s all she can ask right now. 

They’ll both wake up with cramps from sharing such a small space, Hera knows, but tonight, it’s a small price to pay for the relief she feels as she listens to his breath even out into sleep once again. She’ll treasure it as long as she can.


End file.
